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    The Mountain Story
    The Mountain Story
    The Mountain Story
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Mountain Story

    Written by Lori Lansens

    Narrated by Corey Brill

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    “Lori Lansens has created a heart-pounder of a book that is every bit as much of an emotional roller-coaster as an adventurous one” (New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult).

    In New York Times bestselling author Lori Lansens’ “moving portrait of the human spirit—as fierce, lovely, and indomitable as nature itself” (People, “Book of the Week”), Nola has decided to hike up a mountain to commemorate her wedding anniversary, the first since her beloved husband passed. Blonde, rail-thin Bridget is training for a triathalon. Vonn is working out her teenage rebellion at eight thousand feet, driven by family obligation and the urge to escape her mistakes. Still reeling from the tragic accident that robbed him of his best friend, Wolf Truly is the only experienced hiker in this group of four strangers but has come to the cliffs on his eighteenth birthday to end his life.

    When a series of missteps strands them together in the wilderness, these four broken souls soon realize that their only defense against the brutality of nature is one another. As one day without rescue spirals dramatically into the next, and misadventure turns to nightmare, they begin to form an inextricable bond, pushing themselves and one another further than they ever could have dreamed possible. The three who make it home alive will be forever changed by their harrowing days on the mountain.

    Braving a landscape both unforgivingly harsh and breathtakingly beautiful, Nola, Bridget, Vonn, and Wolf find themselves faced with an impossible question: How much will they sacrifice for a stranger? The Mountain Story is a fast-paced, suspenseful, and a gorgeous tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. “Your heart will be in your throat,” says Helen Simonson, New York Times bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJun 30, 2015
    ISBN9781442385610
    The Mountain Story
    Author

    Lori Lansens

    Lori Lansens is the author of Rush Home Road, which was translated into eight languages and published in eleven countries, and The Girls, which was sold in thirteen territories and featured as a book club pick by Richard & Judy in the UK. She was born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, and now makes her home in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

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    Reviews for The Mountain Story

    4.5/5

    42 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This was a beautiful story I did not want to end

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Lori Lansens has done a wonderful job of creating a masterful suspense. Wolf climbs a mountain on his eighteenth birthday with dark thoughts but the boy-man is forced into a situation where he fights for survival - his own and three generations of Devines. He learns not only to survive but to love again and in the process makes for an excellent read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Not really worth the time. Very slow and boring. But if you like very detailed slow books with so odd description choices this could be for you. No disrespect to the author, just not for me
    • 4/5
      The story is well written, the characters are diverse. I was surprised by the ending.
    • 4/5
      The mountain story by Lansens, Lori.Story of Danny, who's just 18 and he's at Angel's Peak thinking about just ending it all. Starts out with the letter Danny writes to his son-years later.He recalls his mother, all the good things. Frankie paints the whole house after Gloria dies-Danny's mother. He decides they need to go to CA, the desert, after Frankie has lost the house in a bet.Danny is of Indian heritage and has no problem being outside. Wolf Truly is what they call him. Love the gift the librarian gives him-his future.As the tram drops them off, he still has walking up the mountain to achieve. There are other women who are there and one wants the particular flower. The secret lake is closeby. One is there to commemorate her wedding anniversary.Love hearing of the sights and sounds as he travels. Some chapters go back in time, some are present with those from the past.Such strategy and survival skills. strong, powerful to the end....I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
    • 5/5
      What an awesome book! Imagine starting the day of thinking you will kill yourself and that ending up changing your entire life forever.I don't want to give any of the story away and just when you think you'll know how this book turns out , the story veers off to another path. I couldn't put it down.
    • 4/5
      Having read and enjoyed Lori Lansens’ three earlier novels, I looked forward to this one. I was not disappointed. It’s a great read.The novel is written as a letter from Wolf Truly to his college-bound son. He tells his son the full story of being lost for five days on a mountain ledge high above Palm Springs, California: “Five days in the freezing cold without food or water or shelter. . . . I was with three strangers . . . not everyone survived” (1).What follows is a man versus nature adventure story as Wolf and the three Devine women (Nola, Bridget and Vonn) battle hunger, thirst, hypothermia, frostbite and wildlife. But the book is also a character study; via flashbacks, we learn about Wolf’s life and why he made the decision to go to the mountain that fateful day. His character and the personalities of the three women are gradually developed. By the end, Wolf knows the women intimately, and they learn things about each other they didn’t previously know.There is a great deal of suspense. The situation of the four hikers becomes more and more dire. And from the book’s cover (“Five days. Four lost hikers. Three survivors”) we know one will die. Which one? Will it be Nola, the injured grandmother; Bridget, the ever-panicking, “dangerously lean” blonde; or Vonn, the teenager who goes hiking in flip flops? We know only that Wolf will survive since he is the narrator. His survival, however, is ironic since he tells his son that “on that cool, grey afternoon, I had decided to hike to a spot called Angel’s Peak to jump to my death” (3).Wolf tells his son, “What happened up there changed my life” (1). It is this story of rebirth that is the added dimension. Almost immediately after meeting the women, Wolf says, “That’s when I noticed that my despair . . . was gone . . . It was like some switch had been flipped off, or rather, on” (52). He is reborn with a new mission: to bring everyone back to safety. Eventually, he comes to think of the three as “A blessing of Devines” (270). And it is not only Wolf who is reborn. There are tensions among the Devine women, especially Bridget and Vonn. Their experiences on the mountain, however, rekindle their love for each other and bonds are restored. Vonn, for example, “completely [rewrites] the story of their difficult past” (349).This book is different from Lansens’ other novels; this is the only one that has a male protagonist and narrator. It is like her other books in that it presents an interesting plot, fully realized characters, and insight into life.
    • 5/5
      Wow, what a book. An incredible story that changes you.
    • 3/5
      Interesting premise, but no suspense
    • 5/5
      Lori Lansens is one of my favourite authors. Each of her previous three books has been a very different story, but each of them celebrates the fortitude of the human spirit.Her newest novel, The Mountain Story, continues that concept.Four people - three of them know each other, the fourth was alone - are stranded on a mountain with no food, no water and no shelter for five days. Three make it down the mountain. And one of the survivors tells the tale...."A person has to have lived a little to appreciate a survival story. That's what I've always said and I promised that when you were old enough, I'd tell you mine .... What happened up there changed my life, Danny. Hearing the story is going to change yours."Wolf Truly is our narrator. He brings to life his fractured upbringing..."In those dangerous narrows grew children who knew too much too young, but sadly, always seemed to learn too little too late."And the story of the mountain. I felt like I was sitting with Danny, reading the letter Wolf has written. Lansens has a way of drawing the reader in, making them feel like they are part of the story as well.Lansens captures the physicality of Wolf's life and his time on the mountain in both good and bad times. Her descriptions painted vivid pictures in my mind as I read. But, The Mountain Story is more than a story of survival. (Even though we know there are survivors, the question of who dies and the fight to make it through another day does not lessen the tension)Where Lansens excels for me is in her characters - their lives, their thoughts and their interactions. The Mountain Story is a coming of age story, an exploration of parent and child relationships, friendships, a questioning of a higher power, loss, love and redemption. And always - the strength of the human spirit. Life is a bumpy road. As Wolf says "There will be sway."Absolutely, positively recommended.
    • 5/5
      A very captivating story, with the wonderful end of a redemption tale. Difficult details to listen to but impossible to not go on...Read with the perfect voice. Five stars plus more.
    • 4/5
      A few months back I started a spate of novels, that I ended up putting aside. My way of having reader's block, having a hard time finding something to grab me right off. Bit, I knew some of these I would want to go back and this was one, after all I usually love this author, so I had to trust she wouldn't write a book I didn't want to read, would she? Of course not and she didn't.When I picked this book back up I was totally fascinated, hooked by the story of Wolf and his despicable father, and his five day stranding on the mountain with the three Devine women. This is a survival story, and the mountain, although there is of course an actual mountain they are lost and stranded on, also, has multiple meanings. Wolf has been hurdling mountains ever since his Mother's death, with his father, his aunt, his friend and his own existence.This is written as a letter to his own son many years later and the reader learns all the perilous things that happened during those five days, when four went up but only three came down. Good survival story, in life and in fact. Wonderful characters, the rotten are truly out for themselves and the good are willing to sacrifice almost everything for those they love. If I have a criticism it is a very small one, this often verges on the melodramatic but the story, the characters andThe writing pulled it through for me. Hope it does for you too.ARC FROM netGalley.
    • 5/5
      Could not stop listening what a story ! Love love
    • 5/5
      I read Lori Lansens' The Girls a couple of years ago. It came to me highly recommended by friends and family. When I heard of her latest book, The Mountain Story I had high expectations and I was not disappointed.This is a story of a young man, Wolf Truly, who has gone to the top of a mountain close to Palm Springs, to jump to his death, but is diverted when he encounters three women who look to him for help finding a secluded lake. The four end up getting lost and endure 5 days of hunger, exposure and danger. The reader gets to know Wolf and the three women gradually throughout the book, their histories meted out with graceful pacing. All four are brought to the brink of death at times and how each copes with the extremes of survival in the wilderness is revealing and evocative. The mountain seems like a character itself, neither good or bad, just there, compelling, rugged and beautiful. This is a wonderful book and I look forward to see what else Lori Lansens has in store for us to read.
    • 4/5
      I want to thank NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

      Daniel Truly receives a letter from his father as he prepares to leave for college; it will rock his world. Daniel's father, Wolf Truly, has something very important to tell Daniel for a long time but has been unable to find the right time to say it. Wolf finally summons the courage to tell Daniel but feels he can't do it face-to-face. He tells Daniel that he will need time to absorb the news.

      Wolf says that everyone "has to have lived a little to appreciate a survival story." It is not a story for a young child's ears but now that Daniel is facing his own future, it is time to learn about his father's past.

      Although the news is about the time that Wolf became lost on a mountain, Wolf tells Daniel he needs to start the survival tale by beginning with the death of his mother, Glory, when he was 4 years old. Life with Wolf's father, Frankie, was hell on wheels from that day forward. Literally. Frankie, always a class-A jerk and failure as a father promises Wolf that he is going to turn a new leaf and start over with his family in California. The new life in California is another nightmare and Wolf finds solace with a close friend, Byrd. Together they explore the wilds of a local mountain. When Byrd suffers a tragic accident, Wolf goes into a deeper depression and rides the Tram to the top of the mountain with the plan to commit suicide.

      While ascending the mountain, Wolf observes three women on the Tram. They seem to have nothing in common with each another. As he strikes out for the cliff, he becomes entangled in a misadventure with each of the three women. Delaying his doom, he attempts to guide the women to their destination and eventually it becomes apparent that the four of them are lost.

      Although they are lost in a dangerous terrain and the mountain plays a vital role in the tale, it is the personal stories that draw you along. Piece by piece the puzzle comes together but you don't know until the final pages what the whole picture will be.

      If you are looking for graphic descriptions of vast vistas, you will be disappointed. This survival challenges not only the body through starvation, injury and hunger but internally in the mind and heart.

      Very recommended.
    • 4/5
      The Mountain Story is an exciting tale of people with initially independent perceptions brought together by a common motivation, the desire for freedom from the past. Determined by a variety circumstances to search restlessly for escape from lives of reaction rather than meaningful action, Wolf, Byrd, Nora, Bridget, and Vonn are drawn by their need for peace to a mountain rising from a desert floor. Wolf, a teenager brought to California from Michigan by his ne’er-do-well father, narrates the story via a letter he is writing later in life to his son describing his magic mountain first as a physical challenge, then as a psychological dilemma. Like Hans Castorp writing in his journal in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Wolf, shows himself to be a naïve but sensitive and accurate observer of the mountain and the behavior of the 4 people who will share his fate.When he first arrived in California, Wolf was passive, following and learning from his friend Byrd, a local California resident, who has developed a good knowledge of the mountain during his life. Then, the reader follows 18 year old Wolf as he rides up the face of the mountain in a sky tram in a state of depression. Alone because Byrd has had an “accident,” Wolf encounters Nora, Bridget, and Vonn riding up in the same tram. Not concerned about the afternoon start of their adventure, the four strangers find a common experience “off trail,” lost on the mountain with darkness closing in quickly. Wolf reluctantly takes a leadership role as the only male but with limited knowledge of the dangerous terrain. He is tested immediately as the party attempts to return to the tram terminal.The story is one of survival during which the four lost hikers must take meaningful action with limited understanding of the mountain. That dilemma causes them to live intensely by the hour, minute, and moment fully owning the rewards and consequences of their behavior. The constricted time line paradoxically allows them more time for life reviews, reflection, and insight than they ever had in the flatlands of their normal lives.The writing provides good descriptions of physical events, and the excitement of potentially deadly situations is high. The exploration of relationships between grandmother (Nora), mother (Bridget), and daughter (Vonn) shows how generational life experience sets the stage and affects reaction times for the characters in emergencies. The reader sees more intimately how Wolf shuffles off the trappings of his early life in Michigan and understands his changes in perceptions through adult relationships with the women. The boy to man changes require that Wolf (like Hans Castorp) tries everything possible to make a commitment to descend from the mountain and keep life close rather than at arm’s distance like his inadequate father.One observation I have is that the voice of Wolf is feminine, as if Lansens is writing about the behaviors and thoughts of a young woman. I noticed this all though the letter Wolf is writing to his son describing the events on the magic mountain. I can see this as both deliberate and accidental as the writer slips in and out of character in the context of the letter.
    • 5/5
      “Dear Daniel, A person has to have lived a little to appreciate a survival story. That’s what I’ve always said, and I promised that when you were old enough, I’d tell you mine.”

      So begins the letter from a father to his son telling the story of Wolf Truly’s life and the five unforgettable days and nights he spent on the (always unnamed) Mountain.

      Life had never been kind to Wolf and when it became more cruel than he thought he could bear Wolf intended to climb to Angel’s Peak at the top of the Mountain and jump. It was the day of his eighteenth birthday. Not planning on returning from his excursion he left his backpack at home leaving him with no food or water. Almost as equally unprepared were Nola, Bridget and Vonn, the Devine women – mother, daughter and granddaughter – one with a mission, one with a grudge and one with a secret. When the paths of these four people cross it begins an unfortunate series of missteps. They find themselves stranded – their only hope of making it off the Mountain alive being their wits and each other.

      This story is the ultimate “you can’t get there from here”. Wolf and the ladies can always see the lights of the city below and even the local trailer park named “Tin Town” and they look so close, so achievable and so inviting. Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving and not only when speaking of landscapes. The book cover states, “The trial they undergo together is thrilling and heartbreaking, funny and nail-biting and profound.” No false advertising there. It certainly is all those things.

      Lori Lansens has been on my “must read author” list since Rush Home Road. Her books have never disappointed me and that carries on with “A Mountain Story”. She gives me characters whose lives are far from perfect, who question themselves and their motivations … who often stop and ask “why me?” … then they persevere placing one foot in front of the other, like we all have to do in real life. Ms. Lansens’ writing takes the readers on every painful step right along side of the characters from the gut-wrenching ride on the tram to get partially up the mountain through to the cold, hard rocks, and the hunger and thirst being endured to try and get back down.


      Excellent writing! An amazing setting! A great story! Another wonderful book by Ms. Lansens.